force carb bottling

Hey guys,

bit of a newbie here and new to the forum. just had a quick question. how do small scale commercial cider producers (without a huge, expensive bottling line) force carb their cider when bottling? what type of equipment are they using?

second question. do counter pressure bottle fillers like the ones these guys sell (http://www.brouwland.com/en/) only work if you are transferring pre-carbonated liquid to bottles, or will they actually add carbonation to a still cider as they fill the bottles?

(sorry it wont let me link to the direct page, but the ones I am referring to can be found under "bottling," "bottling machinery," then "counter pressure fillers").

Unless you're naturally carbing, beer is always carbed prior to bottling. Just like with beer bottling lines, cider will need to be carbed first, then transferred to a bottle via CPBF. CPBF's won't carbonate it in the bottle.

I figured commercial cider producers carb it prior to bottling. But if they are small and don't have a massive bottling line, how do they typically do this and with what equipment?

There has to be a faster way for them to carb than to keg the still cider and then bottle it with CPBF's. They must carb the still cider somehow immediately before bottling right (without first kegging it)?

Most bottling lines have a co2 injector built into the lines. So, as the beer passes through, it gets carbonated. Unless you have lots of money, there's no way to duplicate this at home without expensive equipment.

There is a small scale commercial cider maker not too far from me. They force carbonate some of their ciders using a machine that appeared to be a much larger and more sophisticated version of a corny keg. I assume that they leave the cider in there for a couple days prior to bottling, but I didnt ask them specifically. For home brewers, corny kegs work like a champ and are very cheap. You can use a CPBF to fill bottles, but I just use a length of racking cane that I stick in the tap and drop the pressure on the keg when I fill bottles. I also fill higher than normal so there is only a small amount of headspace in the bottle. That works great, and is cheap. When the keg gets low, its a little wasteful of CO2, because after dropping the pressure in the keg to fill bottles, you need to re-pressurize the keg again.